Class 7: Experiencing Bliss

The Master: Krishnamurti

Beyond my personal recollections, who was this man who inspired hundreds of thousands of people, probably millions? Why do so many people consider him the highest spiritual teacher of contemporary times?

At the turn of the century (1900) a group of British spiritual mystics in the Theosophical movement had visions indiicating that the new Christ had been born, in India. They went in search of this new spiritual master - and through psychic means identified a young lower-cast boy as the living vehicle for the incarnation of the next world Messiah.

• Certain that this humble boy was destined to lead all human beings into a radical new spiritual era of peace and awakening, this British team rather forcefully yanked Krishnamurti from his family, and summarily adopted by the leaders of the Theosophy movement.

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, Krishnamurti and his brother were plunged headlong into European and then American cultural life and education, whether they liked it or not. A quiet, very handsome, sometimes withdrawn boy, Krishnamurti went along with the general life being offered him, yet he remained silent about his own feelings concerning his spiritual identity, and steadfastly refused to enter into serious study of the ancient masters and teachings of the world religious tradition.

Who can say what life Krishnamurti would have led, had he not been grabbed up by the Theosophists and transplanted into European society. I do know from people who were close to the boy in Ojai, that he was quite agonizingly lonely, with only his beloved brother as a true friend - and then his brother died.

Finally as a young man, ultimately unwilling to play the Messiah role thrust upon him, Krishnamurti shocked his many thousands of followes when he publicly threw off the imposed identity as world savior, insisting instead that he was just a man like all others.

• His only special quality, he insisted, was that he held a radical determination to inquire with great passion and total honesty into the ultimate truth of consciousness and human existence.

As I mentioned earlier, because I happened to have been born and raised in the same valley where Krishnamurti spent six months a year throughout most of his adult life, from a very early age I often heard the sound of his English-accented voice talking quietly or with rising passion both in small gatherings and also during his formal talks in the oak groves of Ojai.

Sometimes he would be speaking to his audience in a quiet loving tone, sometimes with more passion, sometimes even somewhat impatiently as he struggled to find the right words that would move his listeners to realize who they really were, how their minds really worked, and what the meditative process was actually all about.

Often at these public gatherings the scent of the Ojai air would be heady, the temperature ideal, the ambiance quiet and subdued. When I was very young there were perhaps fifty to a hundred people at the Ojai Krishnamurti talks, but the numbers steadily grew over the years.

He would begin a talk by sitting quietly on his straight-back chair in front of the group, waiting for however long it took people to calm down and focus. He would close his eyes and tune into the present moment with utter concentration, then look out over the audience sitting around him on pads and blankets, encounter them intensely - and finally at some point in the silence, with great passion he would say something like:

• "I want to ask you today - can you look at yourself without the eyes of the past? Can you watch yourself in action, which is in relationship, without any movement of thought? When there is no past, there is the bliss of the present moment. Can you put aside all thoughts, quiet your mind and look to see the truth of this present moment - and thereby directly know yourself?"

Most of the people who came to listen to Krishnamurti certainly desired to leap into this totally awakened state of mind and heart. And surely some did. But a lot of them didn't seem to be able to let go and make such a leap, judging from the questions and comments that arose toward the end of the talk.

Even though he could express his vision of spiritual awakening clearly and emphatically, the actual process eluded many of his listeners.Why was this?

• Partly because, for his part, Krishnamurti emphatically refused to teach any concrete meditative method to help his followers succeed with his spiritual challenge.

In opposite extreme, he was downright impatient and critical of all established meditative techniques, all the popular gurus, and the meditative teachings of the various world religions. He considered all past teachings and methods a hindrance to spiritual awakening.

Instead he insisted that we must discard cultural conditioning, forget what we think we know from past experience, and look directly in the present moment to see how our minds work, and who we really are.

• "True meditation," he would explain, "is a way of putting aside altogether everything that man has conceived of himself and of the world. In this way, he discovers a totally different kind of mind."

When Krishnamurti was asked specifically about meditation, he would usually reply with concise and yet at the same time mysterious words such as:

• "Meditation means awareness, both of the world and of the whole movement of oneself - meditation is to see exactly what is, without any choice, without any distortion, without any thought."

Much the same as my own children now seem to take for granted the spiritual challenges and insights I struggled so hard to understand in my earlier years, as a child I remember taking in what Krishnamurti was saying mostly by osmosis. I took for granted that what he was talking about was true.

He would say to his Ojai audience:

... and I would do what he suggested, never realizing that most of the adults around me found it deucedly difficult to see the tree without getting lost with thoughts about the tree.

So yes, I feel myself especially blessed to have had this spiritual input early in my life - Krishnamurti made it much easier for me to see the choice, and take the leap.

When I think of him now, I often remember the easy joy in his eyes when we were outside just goofing around - in contrast to his sometimes-impatience mood when he was addressing gatherings.

Because we sporadically encountered each other in Ojai as I was growing up, he knew me by name in later years when I'd meet him in Europe. He seemed to remain a mostly solitary fellow, although toward the end of his life it was revealed that he had lived intimately with a deep Ojai friend and sexual partner for over twenty years.

This seemed to greatly upset some of his followers who assumed he was celibate, in the same way that many people get upset at the idea of Jesus and Maria Magdalena being sexual intimates.

Sometimes he was also criticized for expressing impatience with certain of his followers who seemed to hang on his every word, lecture after lecture, without really taking the spiritual plunge he was encouraging. He did psychologically seem stuck in an impatient mood.

• Obviously the man had his own share of emotional challenges, he'd suffered through a difficult lonely childhood and sometimes even late in his life seemed sad and demonstrated all-too-human upsets. Ultimately he was a vast complex human mystery, as are we all.

Whatever was happening in his private life, in his public life as spiritual teacher he remained a fireball of radical ideas and constant challenges.

He was certain that if we could at least momentarily step beyond our habitual attitudes, judgments, assumptions and apprehensions about what life is all about, that each and every one of us had the inherent inner power to experience vast realms of consciousness beyond the confines of our thinking minds.

Along with a few childhood 'goof-off' experiences with him, I remember opportunities as an adult when I found an opening to talk with him privately. He helped me several times by listening to and commenting upon my fervent questions about what to do with my life. His insights always jolted me, making me look at my underlying assumptions that were causing my upset and confusion.

One year I decided to move back to Ojai and see if I might sink new roots in the valley after many years elsewhere. I lived just a quarter mile from Krishnamurti's home. He had a daily walk he liked to take that went past my house and I would wait for him to come by, so I could go out and walk with him.

On warm sunny days there were usually other people with him, but on blustery days we might be mostly alone, and we strolled mostly in silence. I remembver thinking of my grandfather over in the other side of the valley on his ranch, walking through the same air ... both men seemed to have such a remarkable communion with nature that sustained and inspired them.

• When I would go over and spend time with Gramps, I sometimes was tempted to try to bring the two men together - but I never acted on the impulse. Their lives were complete, and separate.

Now with both of them gone, I still feel their presence quite often, and quite strongly, in my heart. Especially as I sought inspiration to bring this new short-form meditation process into being, I've drawn on their subtle guidance throughout.

As we come to the end of this written discussion of the seven masters, I'd like to say a bit about my experience of how we seem to be touched and guided by such spiritual beings.

I recently wrote a book called Jesus For The Rest Of Us in which I finally talked about my personal relationship with the Christian heritage and Jesus as a present-moment spiritual master. The boo has upset traditional Christians because it does challenge many of the church's beliefs in order to break into the spiritual meditative light of the tradition.

• I no longer hold onto the belief that Jesus was the one and only son of God who was sacrificed for my sins - and so I've moved into what I call 'post-Christian' life. But this doesn't mean I've cut off the true experiential communion that I've always felt with Jesus.

My experience is that there does exist a dimension where we can open our hearts in the present moment, and connect with spiritual masters such as Jesus, and also with the other great spiritual teachers - and others who were not publically lauded at all.

In the fifth expansion of this meditation process you're learning here, you have the opportunity of opening your heart to receive guidance from a spiritual master you call on - this is my experience.

I hope you feel free to do just this - during meditation, see if your attention naturally wants to turn toward one of the masters included in this meditation process - or any other master. They are available - I don't have big beliefs about how all this works - but I know it works.

• Quite honestly, I reached a deep point in my life about twenty years ago where I opened my heart and soul to let Gramps live within me - much the same way that people open their hearts to let Jesus live in them.

This opening came without any forethought - it just happened in meditation one day, and I surrendered to the natural process. Ever since, I have felt the guiding presence of Gramps as well as other spiritual beings helping me in life.

I don't make a big thing of it - it's just how my life is. Often I go through weeks without any particular focus on any of the masters. As I've mentioned before, I also find direct communion with the divine natural and sustaining. I open my heart in the fifth expansion to receive, and then in the sixth expansion experience the feeling of direct connection with the Creator.

• But sometimes when I open my heart in the fifth expansion, I find a more personal spiritual presence - and this is wonderful, especially when I don't provoke it.

The truth is, we are each and every one of us surely in the loving hands of all the enlightened beings, if only we remember to open up and tune in.

And in each of our lives, each new moment, the external teacher we need is also always before us - right now you're open to this online course as a teacher ... maybe later today you'll encounter someone who just happens to say the right words that wake up an insight or realization, or see a TV show, or listen to the song of a bird, or whatever...

We never know who our next teacher will be. That's why regularly, we open our hearts to receive, and do our best to stay open! And in that open state, we also turn our attention directly to the source of all teaching and inspiration - to our own core of being and the infinite Creator that sustains our personal lives.